Coltrane’s Heart

Upon our wait for the blossoms of the pink Dogwood,

You turned to me with cornflower blue eyes,

That sang with Coltrane’s heart, and Holliday’s soul.

This time I was assured, and disposed.

This time, there would be no looking away.

Your face approaching mine,

Like a melting snowflake in April.

No more patient than slow.

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Pennies in a Garden

We are merely pawns, and somehow get caught between leisure and survival.

Our elementary needs are no longer constant,

But instead we become picked up, brushed aside, and looked over.

Our hearts beat us on towards a final place, where we become hyphenated.

Combining us unto one,  most deserving soul.

That person we long to survive with,

But dare not think of life without.

Grandmother’s Basement

Is there a more perfect place for you than that of here?

Somewhere arms would never get tired of you.

Here, where ears would listen intently to your influence and, your ideas.

That place where deep thoughts and words are considered foreplay.

The company of many creating a pattern that is void of judgment.

Fire. Flood. Cake

Fire

I imagine you blowing out your candles at peace with the world.

The smoke curling up into the air,

Like tiny spider webs finding their resting point.

The vision of frosting left upon a knife, which severed the coat into pieces.

Moving on to fill other mouths,

That can carry a tune without void or objection.

Mimicry

Photo subject to Copyright by the Author

A faint whisper saying, paint me in red.

Your eyes, like dark blue pieces of scrap paper,

Are similar to mine, yet lack the facility to see.

The mimicry of last requests before the pink sky turns to black.

Construction Paper Mess

Would you see the world through my eyes, my heart?

Let my blindness, guide you to no more of a perfect place,

Than that of this.

Will you taste the world with my tongue, my lips?

The burn of me lingering upon you like the habanero.

Your fingers, the remedy for my biome, my mind.

My skin your canvas.

Would you draw for me a map, so that I may find your place?

Momma, Why?

In a quiet tone she asked,

Momma, why is the night sky pink?

I watched her in the rear view mirror,

Her young mind lay full of wonder,

Her dark brown eyes, sleepy.

The conversation, used tactfully,

as minor attempt to fight the sleep that lay before her.

We pushed down the hushed, sleeping street.

Rows of houses dark, mailboxes tightly sealed.

No busy squirrels gathering food.

The Woman

The cool morning air caught and carried my breath,

With no trouble, as if it were Cochrane suited up with his glove.

I watched her as she was pushing away.

Her entire life piled up next to her in that junction.

That spot nobody wants to see in the mind’s eye.

Her entire wardrobe ticked away in a Nathan’s paper sack.

Me walking along the weight of my mail bag on my shoulder,

Was not enough to dismiss,

Or keep my thoughts away from her.

Wings and Parts

With the snow, the butterflies came and they left.

Their compound became fractured with the piercing cold,

That left their wings stiff and unbalanced.

The most delicate touch gave way to the loss of senses.

I found a piece of you today,

That was left blanketed underneath the frost covered plants that have already died,

With the changing of the season.

Dust

I am but the dust,

That collects upon the bottom of a shoe,

Turning the white slowly to gray.

Collecting in the wind,

Stopping for a short rest on a cornea.

I am the sliver in a tired hand,

The one the needle attempts to retract

You remove a small bit,

While lodging the better piece of me deeper.

Midnight Confessions

If I could tell you once more ….
How much your strength means.
How I could get high on your laugh.
And dampened by your voice.

To feel the rigor of your soul collide with mine.
But alas, you are gone,
With your stories,
And our midnight giggles.
You grew tired, weak.

White-Colored Flesh

From my window, I watch your large hands work.

I sigh, putting the flowers in water.

They smell better than the meatloaf.

Your buss leaves behind the smell of saliva and ketchup.

As you bury the trowel,

In an old dis-remembered chest.

Fireflies

It was where we found shelter,

Deep among the roots, sturdy,

And buried beneath these old floorboards.

The whippoorwills would sing us to sleep,

As the only lights that came through the,

Small framed window, were

Those from the silent calls of the fireflies.

Margins

A heart, unsound plunges ahead.

Declined.

Pallid.

Though newly redesigned.

With each beat comes resolve.

A schlemiel, shows only impedance.

Putting the arm on.

Liquidating not stabilizing.

Blue Prints

A year, singular.

Close to a woman, who has yet to be branded.

Anticipations fall. Miscarried blue prints leave only litter.

Like tissue on a highway.

Softly decorating the branches of nearby trees,

like the tail end of kites..

Time signaled the foundation for beginnings, and cessations.

Self gratification, and vacillation only interrupted good intentions.

Dirt on Your Heel

The gentle bend of your foot,

As my hand softly curls around it like a lock of hair.

Specks of week old purple nail polish

Still cling to your nails.

They beg for a much needed trimming.

The end result of a not so perfect paint job.

Peck and Warble

You fell a good, long way.

An altricial species,

With your odorous niche and status exhausted.

Scattering your matter around casually

I mewled watching you skip queerly around.

Pecking and warbling in an anomalous patois.

My eyes cold like lead pellets,

Open only to give you the once over, as

The twigs nestled around me pierce my squalid wings.

Midnight Belly Laughs

My breathing trickles,

Slow.

Slow.

Slower,

Like a faucet recently shut off.

My depth relaxed, lips gently parted.

The thump thump of small feet,

Move awkwardly in the dark.

Fingers tap my bare shoulder, twice.

I hear her sleepy voice ask me again tonight.

Toddler in a King Sized Bed

The glow of the streetlight reflects the curve of my arm.

As it lay limp around this cool fat pillow.

I feel like a toddler in a king sized bed.

Small and negligible.

Soft breathy sighs of a night’s silent dream,

Through a window I jump.

No burning or falling to my end.

Instead I float like a dirty feathered pigeon and,

Land on my feet.

 

Transmissions

An abortion of the mind.

While nursing out redundant pieces of dated left over’s,

Cushioned understanding, layered softly around my head.

No concrete inference, only the notion for stain.

Deliberation of essential nature,

Left up for tenet beliefs.

Another session turns off. Recalled.

Back to the beginning of the line.

I am left anesthetized deficient. UN-fulfilled.

I Leave Behind Me

I am the man you pass by near the Baron Fork Bridge.

Every morning at 7.

The one you can never look directly at.

This coat I wear has faded along with my auburn hair.

The smell of your aftershave reminds me of better times.

Before death and rape took what little was left of my mind.

My family.

My name.

As my children look up to a better man than I could have ever been.

38

Hot breath blows like the late August air.

Brushing against the tip of my upper lip.

Comforts like the touch of a security blanket,

Below.

Smoke folds up towards the sky,

slowly finding another place.

Higher, past clouds of the same color.

Condemned.

Tiny Footsteps

The streets busy, like a preschool playground.

Tiny footsteps. Perambulation.

People pack together, like hot sardines in a can.

Senses roused.

Muffled expression, and then- absence.

Columbine

Columbine’s sweet fragrance dangles.

Like a rusted clasp on a string of pearls, while

the morning doves obsessively peck at nothing. The,

pair, life’s ethereal mate.

This Woman

A blurry snapshot is placed closer upon inspection.

The previously reinforced responses, now withheld.

A heart beats, leaving behind it blue smoke.

 

This woman remembers good advice.

Sit up straight, eyes forward, and legs crossed.

In a stretch, she found herself changed.

A substitute unfamiliar, and anthologized.

Hoover’s Departure

I sit here, watching you lay lifeless in the corner.

Grey cords, dust and empty hoses border you.

My fingers itch, and my eyes sting.

I sneeze and then sneeze again.

I know you must be sleeping.

Dreaming happy little dreams, of work and our family.

You have to be.

I Am the Lake

Tonight.

I am the lake,

On the first Nacht of June.

My waters unruffled, as

The moon casts its cautionary glances our way,

Like a blurry constellation

Down.

Down.

Down.

Upon my state of introduction.

Warm….

Inviting you in for a dip.

Softly my waters wrap around your trunk.

As the high tide rivets your bulk.

Like an Olympian,

You swim.

Pissed Lullabies

You lay before me nicely decorated.

Despite that you were a weak and doddering sponge of a man.

One who was too undependable to demonstrate love and compassion.

I review your constant state.

As my heart exhumes the recitals of your frailty and your miscarriages.

Though a transient, your face is kindred.

I regret that I only knew you through stories of pissed lullabies,

desecration, and verbal vomit.